


In the Infinite Mercy of the Storm

by thesanctumautistic



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Autism, London, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 05:41:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18309317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesanctumautistic/pseuds/thesanctumautistic
Summary: Sherlock befriends a lonely young woman who needs a friend or two in her life -- much like someone else Sherlock knows. The story of Emma Rousseau begins here. Work in progress.





	In the Infinite Mercy of the Storm

 

I'd made the decision when I turned in on Friday night that the morning would bring something different. Something novel. I'd do something out of the ordinary, out of my ordinary... which, in this case, meant doing something completely normal. Just a change of pace, that's all. John had a class to take online for work and I wanted to give him peace and quiet to finish whatever it was he needed to do. Rosie was scheduled to go on a play date with a friend from nursery school that morning.

 

I awoke to the muted gray sunrise that is a rainy day in London streaming through the window, and, after dressing and checking on a few experiments mulling about in the kitchen, ventured forth into the chilly, damp weather.

 

I was already convinced that absolutely nothing of interest would happen today, and I was already bored half to death in the back of a cab headed north.

 

I found myself wandering around a museum in Euston, aimlessly at first, but then the people became fascinating. Families with young children, older children, always with two or more, and if more than two, one in a stroller. _Stepchild. Adopted child. Three years old, new glasses, seeing the world around him for the first time._ Two bankers, young working professionals on a weekend date. _Met on the internet. New haircut._ Tourists. I heard French, Portuguese, some Spanish, German, Italian, in the span of half an hour's time. Carrying too much around. College kids, taking a break from their studies. _In danger of failing A-levels but won't admit it to mum._ Reading the story of their lives as they walked past.

 

I seldom saw anyone by themselves who did not work there. One man sat down in a chair near the cafe, texting someone on his phone. Meeting his date here. Likely stood up. She used the weather as an excuse. A student heading upstairs hurriedly to the library to study. Roommate pissed her off one too many times this week. A young woman in a jacket, phone in hand, meandering around the medical exhibit floor.

 

Now _she_ was interesting because she was not like the others.

 

Navy blue jacket, not a coat, lightweight, planning to stay mostly indoors. Leather clogs worn by nurses, scuffed around the toes, secondhand but in good shape.... something is wrong with her knees, based on how she walks, that's why she wears them. Old, comfortable jeans -- not here to impress anyone. Simple purple tee shirt. Straightened hair, a bit windswept. Glasses, green and blue - likes color, needs them to see in front of her face. Plain brown leather backpack instead of a purse, small, off brand, received as a gift, she'd never choose that color herself. Planning exclusively on being out and about in London today and walking a lot.

 

But why?

 

Walking around with her phone, but not texting... just typing, taking notes. Meeting a friend? She glances over her shoulder every few minutes at the people around her, passing by her, but not looking for anyone -- she's looking to see that they're going somewhere and not approaching her. Making sure she's safe.

 

She'd seen me.

 

I backed off a little bit, let her wander away from me and pretended to be interested in something directly opposite her. I didn't want her to feel threatened... I just wanted to know more. Curiosity was quickly getting the better of me. _What is her story?_

 

In the reflection from the glass, I saw her struggling with her phone. The buttons confused her, or rather the lack of buttons. It must be new. She took a picture, then notated something, and meandered a few feet away, taking the time to read everything she saw. _She's not here to just pass the time. She's studying._

 

What young woman would walk around London in the rain completely by herself and spend the morning at a museum in a medicine exhibit? Studying on her own?

 

I could relate to that. The curiosity for the sake of curiosity, to learn something new, to know more --

 

_An autistic woman._

 

She scratched at her head, but absentmindedly. I took a coin out of my pocket and slowly walked to her side; the exhibition was the human genome, printed in its entirety and bound in books. She leafed through one open volume absently.

 

"Penny for your thoughts?"

 

She looked up. Green eyes, little makeup, and a bit of a smile. "You know, I wonder whose letters these are." She flipped through a few more pages. "Was this all sequenced from one person, or collated to determine which ones overlap and are most common? It's just statistically impossible that one person's genome would be identical to another... but then again, gene expression is a thing, so what do I know." Turned a few more pages, flipped to the back of the book. "But if this... let's say the human genome works like a program, if this was run through the computer, what would it look like? What would that human turn out to be? I mean, obviously, the results are male, we have both of those chromosomes here."

 

I fished a pound coin out of my pocket instead and handed it to her. She let me lay it in her hand and looked at it curiously for a second. "What's this for?"

 

"That brilliant brain of yours. Sherlock Holmes." I held out my right hand.

 

Tentatively, she shook my hand, but she was still very confused. Looked me up and down. Short, five foot one. Already starting to get gray hairs. "Emma Rousseau.”

 

"Emma, it's a pleasure to meet you. I swear I'm not stalking you, let me clear that up straight away."

 

Emma laughed, a little bit of her nervousness fading. "Okay. Um... alright then, sure. If you say so."

 

"I just find you very interesting."

 

"I'd have to say this is the first time a stranger has walked up to me, let me blab about one of my random interests, and handed me money."

 

"Genetics? Not all that random, really, we are in a museum. Why are you here on a day like today?" I noticed she wasn't a fan of eye contact; she looked around as she talked, and I found myself looking as well to see if she had spotted anything of interest. No, she was just people watching, like me. I heard a Spanish dialect several paces behind me and a child crying farther off. Overtired, probably hungry.

 

"I'm bored." She took a step back away from the bookshelf and gave it a once over before glancing back to me. "Really, that's it. I'm bored. I could sit at home and read a book, or I can cross another museum off of my list."

 

"Not meeting up with friends, then?"

 

"What friends?" Emma started to wander to another section of the exhibit, and I followed her.

 

"Oh, you _have_ to have friends."

 

"I have one, she's going through a divorce that's getting rather ugly, she has a three year old daughter, and we haven't been talking recently." She stopped, thinking, and lowered her voice. "Why am I telling you all this?"

 

"How long has it been since you last had someone to talk to?"

 

Emma nodded to herself, then narrowed her eyebrows and addressed me again. "D'you do this to people a lot? Just get them talking to you?"

 

"No, actually, not really. But I can tell you a lot about you."

 

"Oh, I doubt that."

 

"Really?" I inclined my head toward her a bit. She crossed her arms in front of her and her feet at the ankles, but she smiled... and so did I.

 

"I know you're here by yourself, not meeting anyone, you're planning on being out in London most of the day but staying indoors for most of it. You're studying nursing, but you're not in school yet, so you're actually here to learn something today, you're not just wandering around aimlessly. You're not a fan of people -- which is a bit odd if you want to be a nurse -- and you don't want anyone to talk to you, so that tells me you want to be left alone to think. I can tell you have problems with your knees, you're extremely near sighted, you just got a new phone, and you're likely on the autistic spectrum, I hope that last bit doesn't come as a surprise to you."

 

Emma stared at me for a long moment, cocked her head to the side, and then nodded. "Yeah... that's... that's about right. Okay, I'm impressed."

 

"Did I get the part about nursing school right?"

 

"Indeed you did. And I want to work either with babies or in the OR or CCU."

 

"That explains the people problem, then."

 

"Bingo. More brain work, less social work. Well, work socialising, you know what I mean."

 

"Right." I followed her around the corner, down the hall, where we found a bench to sit on. "I have to ask, why not medicine?"

 

"I'm allergic to debt. I'm still trying to get out of it from my first degree."

 

"In?"

 

"Math and science. Long story."

 

"But you live in London." How on earth is she saving money for school while living here? She walked here, after all.

 

"Still live at home with my mum."

 

I nodded. Not unusual these days, the global economy the way it is. Mum, not mum and dad, not siblings, just mum. Perhaps mum is poorly, Emma would be well-suited to helping her out. "Where's home?"

 

"Thought you said you weren't stalking me."

 

"I'm not. I live in Westminster."

 

"Out in Chiswick."

 

"Where did you go to school?"

 

"University of East London. Took five years to finish a three year degree." Emma looked away, down at her feet. "Lived on campus the last two years, not my brightest move," she sighed. "And changed programmes six weeks before graduation."

 

"And you still graduated."

 

"With a BA in math and science. Administration gave me hell over that."

 

"I'm curious to hear how you did it."

 

"Ah, well." She leaned back on the bench, stuffed her phone inside her backpack. "Enough about me, though."

 

"Are you saying that because you think I'm tired of hearing you talk about yourself?"

 

"Of course, everyone's tired of hearing me talk."

 

There was a sadness in her eyes and her expression just then, a shadow and a distinct lack of a smile as she told me something that she knew beyond a doubt to be true. _Everyone's tired of hearing me talk. No one listens, nobody cares._ Perhaps she really doesn't have any friends... a few acquaintances, numbers saved in her phone, but the ones that check up on her from day to day or ask her out to coffee she could probably count on one hand, fewer than three days out of the week.

 

_Everyone's left you behind, haven't they? They abandoned you because you were different. Because you still are._

 

"I'm not," I told her.

 

"And you also swear you're not stalking me."

 

"Perhaps I'm lonely too."

 

"How did you know I was lonely?"

 

"Why else would you be here at a museum on a cold, rainy Saturday talking to a stranger named Sherlock Holmes?"

 

"I've heard of you, you know." Emma stood up, swinging her backpack back on her shoulders. The sky was trying to grow lighter outside, not that it would last. She was restless. I stood and walked further with her, past the gift shop, into a darker, wood-paneled room: the Medicine Man exhibit. She meandered over to a wall of portraits, surveying them at arm's length.

 

I stood next to her, but not too close. "What have you heard?"

 

"Your name, mostly. You're smart. I don't pay all that much attention to the news, to be honest."

 

"Hmm... okay." Emma took her phone out of her backpack to make notes again and wandered further down the wall of pictures. I followed her.

 

"What brought you to the museum today, then, Mr. Holmes?"

 

"Sherlock, please. Boredom mainly, like you." I peered closer to the portrait she was studying of Florence Nightingale. "My flatmate is finishing up a course for work, I figured I would give him some peace and quiet to focus for a while."

 

"That's considerate of you. What's he do?"

 

"He's a doctor."

 

Her eyebrows went up, Suddenly she was looking at the portrait from over her glasses frames. "Oh, _really_."

 

"Mmhmm." I peered at her, but where she wouldn't have noticed me looking. That certainly got her attention. Emma pursed her lips.

 

"Wow. Two brains in one flat."

 

"What do you mean by that?"

 

"Just that, that you're both very smart." Emma glanced at me casually.

 

I decided to go for it. "You like doctors, don't you."

 

"I never said that." But she smiled right before she responded. She did -- I saw the corners of her lips threaten to turn up, then she bit her lower lip and tried to play uninterested. It was not working.

 

"Oh, I know you didn't."

 

"Sherlock -- " Emma sighed, walked three paces away. Exhibit in a glass case, peering over glasses, thinking but not seeing, looking but not finding. I stood a few feet away, interested in the ornate skull behind glass. Her excitement faded so fast, and now her eyes looked... sad again, maybe hurting. The halogen lighting gave her face a blue shadow as she scratched her head. 

 

I knew I'd touched on a tender spot. Maybe she'd recently been in a breakup. Lost someone. _Why a doctor? Why did that get her attention?_   "Emma, did you see this?"

 

She sauntered over, hopefully forgetting that touchy conversation for the moment. "Oh my God." She took a step back, hand to her chest, as she spotted the giant spider crawling out of the skull's eye socket. "Oh, geez, is that a real hand...?"

 

"I don't know. But the skull isn't real."

 

"How do you know?"

 

"First off, it says here that it's a wax model... and second, the teeth are too perfect."

 

Emma leaned over to look closer, then stood up and shivered, and did this... thing with her hands, sort of a flail in front of her chest, but mostly with her fingers, all while gritting her teeth. "It's interesting but it's also... ewww, bugs. Uck."

 

I had to chuckle. "Are you creeped out?"

 

"A bit." But she was laughing, engaged, interested.

 

"What else gives you the creeps?"

 

"Oh, geez, skeletons are the worst."

 

"Really?"

 

"Yes! They're so... I don't know, _bare_." I laughed. "What, it's true! If one of those started moving, I would be absolutely creeped out beyond belief. I couldn't handle it. I didn't even like being in the lab with the model skeleton in uni. Nope. I stayed on the _opposite side of the room_  for that entire class."

 

"You're going to be a nurse and you're afraid of skeletons."

 

"Yes! And have you ever seen a cross section MRI of someone's head that includes the eyes?"

 

"I'm... not sure if I have."

 

"I think there's one around here, let me see if I can find it. Come on."

 

We walked the entire second floor of the museum only to sit down and find what she was seeking on her phone. "Just look at that," she said. "Tell me the eyeballs aren't creepy."

 

"Well... I suppose it could be."

 

"Turn it 'round this way, it's worse."

 

"Oh, well, now it's looking straight at me. All right, I can go along with that. That's creepy." She chuckled. "Have you seen the exhibit that travels around, oh, what is it called -- the plastinated human bodies."

 

"Body Worlds or something like that."

 

"Yes."

 

"I haven't. I'm just a little bit squicked out about it."

 

"Squicked out." I tested the word. New. Interesting.

 

"Yeah. Being that it's _actual_  bodies that have been preserved. I mean, I know that the... um... the previous owners donated them freely for the cause, but... it's still kind of... morbid. I don't know. I had the opportunity to go see it once and I just got this overwhelming feeling of sadness, I just couldn't bring myself to go."

 

"That's really interesting." _Previous owners_. **I love it.**

 

"But I'd rather participate in a cadaver lab than dissecting a cat for a grade."

 

"Really."

 

"I like cats."

 

"You don't necessarily like people."

 

"Is that obvious?"

 

"A bit."

 

Emma's phone rang, vibrating in her hand and startling her. "Oh God." She quickly declined the call; I saw it was her mum.

 

"You shouldn't have answered that?" I asked.

 

"Yeah, probably. Um. Hang on, let me text her." But the phone rang again right away, and this time she answered it. "Hello?... I'm at the museum. No, I'm fine, I ran into a friend. I'll be home before dark... I will. I'll let you know when I leave. Just... can you text me next time? You did? I don't think it came through.... Okay, well, let me go, I'll text you later. I love you too."

 

"Mum?"

 

Emma sighed. "Yeah."

 

"You need to go?"

 

"Probably." I reached for her phone. "What?"

 

"Let me give you my number." I dialed my number in, called my phone, and hung up. "We'll meet up for coffee. Or lunch. Or... something."

 

"Okay." Emma stood, shuffling with her backpack again. "Look, um... Friends?" She held out her right hand.

 

I smiled. "Of course." I shook her hand firmly, and she did the same. "Friends."

 

As we left the museum doors behind us, walking into the drizzle of the early afternoon, I saw Emma turn to walk to the tube station. "Text me," I told her.

 

"Okay."

 

And she smiled, and she waved, and she stumbled over her own two feet... and she walked away.

 

 

~*~

 

 

"Did you get lost?"

"No." John was still on the computer at the desk in the living room, but he looked much less serious and focused than he had this morning when I left. I picked up a happy Rosie as she met me at the door and perched her on my hip while she snuggled into my coat. "I had a nice normal morning in London. Went to a museum. People watched." I pretended to steal Rosie's nose. She gave me a shocked face, and I made one right back to her, then nuzzled her nose with mine, making her giggle.

 

"Anything interesting?"

 

"Actually..." I let Rosie down, watching her run off to her toys on the couch, the zoo of stuffed animals she'd been feeding with a bowl of pretend porridge. "Yes." I sat down in my chair, turning on the telly. John closed his computer and turned toward me. "I made a friend."

 

"What kind of friend are we talking about?"

 

"Just a friend." John was skeptical. I shrugged. "She was bored and lonely, so we walked the museum together and talked." I changed the channel.

 

"What's her name?" His voice turned up at the end.

 

"Emma." I anticipated his next question. "Mid twenties probably. Quite smart. Thinks a lot. Keeps to herself."

 

"You gave her your number, didn't you?"

 

"Mmmhmm."

 

"I knew it."

 

"You'd like her, John."

 

"Hmm." He turned to watch Rosie for a moment, listening to her quiet voice as she talked to the elephant and the fox and told them to eat all their lunch. "Why do you say that?"

 

"The way she thinks. She's interesting."

 

"You don't seem all that impressed, to be honest." John went to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

 

"I simply don't want my impressions to cloud your judgment is all."

 

"What do you -- Alright, out with it, what are you not telling me, Sherlock." Not a question.

 

"She likes doctors."

 

John wrinkled his forehead. "How did you find this out?" His tone of voice said _why is this even relevant? What the hell do you ask the people you meet in museums, anyway?_  Oh, John, you had to be there....

 

"I mentioned my flatmate was a doctor, her face lit up like a Christmas tree for half a second, and then she _vehemently_ denied it when I asked her about it."

 

"How do you even get into conversations like this with people?" _Aaaaand there it is._

"She asked what I was doing out at the museum, I told her you were studying for work, she asked what you did, the rest is history."

 

"What's she do?"

 

"I don't think I asked."

 

"But you told her about _me_."

 

"Literally the only thing I mentioned regarding you."

 

Silence.

 

"I'm not trying to set you up, if that's what you're thinking."

 

"Yes you are."

 

"No. I'm not. But I think you should meet her."

 

"Tea?"

 

"Always."

 

"Tea!" said Rosie, and she began to sing to her stuffed animals about "tea time, everybody, tea time, tea time" while digging out as many plastic tea cups as she could find from her box of toys under the coffee table.


End file.
